


Two of us

by lucifel



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/F, F/M, Pre-Slash, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-18
Updated: 2010-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-13 18:15:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucifel/pseuds/lucifel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Without even seeing her, he blocks her way. (Madge hates just as quietly as she loves.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two of us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lightningwaltz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningwaltz/gifts).



1.

The first time his mother takes Peeta Mellark to Mayor Undersee's house, she spends the entire trip wiping non-existent smudges of dirt from his face and whispering sharply at him to "make a good impression." It is, in its way, her manner of showing love for him; like how she praises his cake decorations up one side then down the other before customers when, in private, she complains endlessly about all the sugar and pigments he uses. (She complains about everything really; Peeta knows that that's just her way. He thinks the same when she hits him.)

In the Mayor's kitchen, Madge admires the expensively frosted cookies they've brought. Shaped and painted to look like large strawberry slices, they're as bright as the day is gray. They are for her fourteenth birthday.

"These are beautiful, Mrs. Mellark," Madge compliments dutifully, "And it was so kind of you to bring them yourself." Behind Peeta's shoulder, his mother chirps something about how her Peeta had worked especially hard to be certain that they would suit.

His mother shoves him none too subtly as she says it and, without thinking, Peetra blurts out, "Katniss mentioned how much you like strawberries." Which causes a certain look to cross Madge's face and Peeta to flush.

He's old enough to recognize pity when he sees it.

Silence reigns momentarily.

"Perhaps," Madge says hesitantly, "you'd like to try one... if your mother can spare you to stay for some tea?"

Mrs. Mellark, for her part, is all too pleased to do so and whispers only one reminder about how "advantageous" it would be for them if he could "secure little Madge-y's heart."

In the sitting room, they are quiet together. Neither of them touch the cookies. Madge folds her hands one way and then the other, while Peeta checks his nails for flakes of dough.

"It's my father," Madge finally says, "who likes the strawberries." Her eyes dart to him, then down. He doesn't believe for a moment that she finds it easier to watch his hands than his face. "She and Gale bring them here for him." He watches her shoulders rise as she inhales. "You must've heard wrong. Though... though I imagine she wasn't talking to you."

He watches her fingers dart to the plate on the table and one of the cookies, all of his work, crumbles in her hand. "I mean, she only ever talks to Gale." And now they're both flushed.

Peeta doesn't know what she means by bringing it up. What she thinks to achieve by pointing out how much of Katniss's attention he doesn't have. Except that he does. He knows exactly what she means to say; what her pity and her contempt and her clumsy stab at subtlety are for. It makes him angry in a way that almost nothing else has. (He isn't invited to Madge's birthday dinner tonight. Katniss is.) Peeta Mellark doesn't need Madge Undersee to point out that, of everyone in school, he's the only one Katniss actively avoids.

"Yeah," he says casually, "I noticed that." He repeats, "She only ever talks to Gale." And if she catches his meaning - what he means to imply - what he's seen from years of watching Katniss Everdeen and, by extension, Madge, she doesn't let on.

Instead, she offers him a cookie and, two years thereafter, allows herself to feel one vicious stab of satisfaction amidst the all consuming panic when he is reaped as tribute.

2.

Madge watches the broadcasts for as long as she can stand to. She watches Katniss curl up in the cave next to Peeta. Watches them cuddle and coo and kiss. Madge watches until she wants to scream and feels certain that she'll vomit if she has to watch a second more. She watches until she wishes Peeta Mellark dead and then runs out of her house so that she won't have to watch anymore. (Knowing full well that it will all still be there when she returns.)

It's a Sunday, and the streets are deserted in the half dark. For once, almost everyone is willingly glued to the broadcasts. But the broadcasts make Madge angry. They make her listless and unhappy; cause her to laugh shrilly and cry suddenly and snap at her father like the baker's infamous harpy of a wife. Her mother calls it hysteria. Her father just shakes his head and mutters something about grief. Madge doesn't care what they call it. She just keeps walking until she feels it fade a little from her chest.

She walks past the square and the school, past the strangely still hob and towards the ramshackle houses of the seam. She is relieved that the empty streets spare her the reporters who have descended upon twelve like a flock of carrion birds. The reporters always make the hysteria worse. The hysteria gets worse yet when there are others around. In the presence of reporters, every girl at school suddenly has a story to share about one or another of the tributes. Before their cameras, every family in town claims to have contributed to Greasy Sae's sponsorship fund. But the girls at school (except maybe for featherbrained Delly who is far too kind for her own sake) had never had time for Katniss before and it had been the people in the seam - those people with little to eat and less to spare - that had given money to help Katniss in the Arena. These seam families and Madge and the Mellarks and maybe Delly. They. Not the others. The others lie in the hope of accolades.

Madge can hardly stand their simpering and their lying and, worst of all, how each of them will shrug and tell the reporters to "go ask Gale" when they find that they cannot answer a question about Katniss. No one seems to think to mention Madge. To even suggest that they had been friends.

Madge hates it, because if no one else saw it then it's entirely possible she herself had imagined their friendship. The way she had imagined whole friends for herself when she had been small. But she couldn't have. Couldn't possibly have because Katniss wears her pin in the Arena and Madge had kissed her check when she had pinned it and - and that girl, that child Rue - she'd seen it, and trusted it and Katniss wore it still. So Madge couldn't have imagined it all.

Not when the Mockingjay was hers.

In the seam, there are more signs of life than there are in the town. People spill between each other's houses asking "did you see that?" and "can you believe?" A great number of them are laughing about something and Madge is certain that she would rather not know. As she nears the Everdeen house, Madge sees that Gale, too, has endured as much as he is able. He leans against the door, an empty sack at his feet. He breathes deeply, in and out, hands clutched into fists at his side.

Without even seeing her, he blocks her way.

Madge doesn't want to speak to him. To see her own emotions mirrored back at her on his face. She doesn't want to ask if he's ever kissed Katniss or how those hands of his have touched her. She doesn't want to hate him. Doesn't want to wish Peeta Mellark dead. She doesn't know why she came here.

So she flees.

The next morning, it's a Monday and Madge has fought off the hysteria once more. In the street, a reporter from the capital stops her and has the gall to ask whether Madge knows Katniss Everdeen well. If she knows anything about Katniss and Gale. The insinuations are obvious and Madge knows what sort of scandal this reporter is looking to stir. So Madge tosses her hair and smiles winningly at the silly, stupid woman and her camera (broadcasting live). "Didn't anyone tell you?" she asks brightly, "he's her cousin!"

And Madge thinks, for just a second, that she can even make it true.

 

3.

Primrose Everdeen is standing on the platform beside her mother when the train pulls in. She holds Mrs. Everdeen's sleeve with one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other. Around them, the crowd of greeters, well wishers, and camera men jostle and push in good humored eagerness. From within this crowd, Gale Hawthorn watches. He watches Prim bounce on the balls of her feet, watches Mrs. Everdeen smile mechanically for the cameras while Mrs. Mellark preens. He watches, and wonders why (unlike everyone else) he feels no relief and no elation at the victors' return. (He knows why. Doesn't have to wonder why. He wonders because it's easier than examining the rage simmering beneath his contempt at being put on parade for the capital's entertainment.)

Around him, the crowd stirs and cheers as the doors open as the victors descend like a vision made true.

At first, Gale can barely see them; can barely breathe through his relief when he sees her - it's impossible to breathe through the solidity of reality now that Katniss is here again. (For the first time in weeks, Katniss is just steps out of reach. So many steps.) Katniss is safe and breathing and rushing to sweep Prim up in her arms; crushing the flowers between them. Katniss holds tight to her sister and won't let go, even when she should.

Katniss is too thin, too polished, _too capitol_ by half. She is happy, looks happy, looks whole - but she looks nothing at all like Gale's Catnip, so he lets his eyes skim over her and fix on Haymitch who is shaking the Mayor's hand. Haymitch who, strangely, is searching the crowd over the top of Mayor Undersee's head.

He's searching for Gale.

Gale knows this because Haymitch's eyes stop right on him - catch his gaze long enough for Gale to nod - then skim right over him to fix on someone to the front and a bit to the side.

For a moment, Gale is confused. Because Gale knows what Haymitch is doing, is saying with his gaze. (Though he wonders how dumb Haymitch thinks he is; Gale doesn't need to be warned to be smart. Gale is smart; knows better than to look at Peeta when there are cameras around. He had, himself, decoded the messages sent to Kat via parachute in the arena. He knows not to show his resentment where others can see.) So Gale wonders who Haymitch thinks he's warning.

Gale follows his gaze to Madge, the mayor's daughter, who is smiling so, so very coldly at Peeta. (To a wolf, to a hunter, a smile can look like a set of barred teeth.) Madge isn't friends with Gale. Doesn't speak to him. She seems to know that he resents her and all those like her. He doesn't care about Madge Undersee but Katniss does and Madge, if he recalls correctly, was the first to name him as Kat's cousin. To try and protect her from the possibility of him.

He remembers wondering what she had meant by that.

But she is still smiling at Peeta and Haymitch is now almost glaring and Gale, at least, knows that anger, rage, and vengeance are useless without an instinct to survive so he shoves forward and pulls hard on Madge's hand.

She startles, and in that moment her eyes skim across Kat and across Prim. Her free hand twitches against her side and suddenly, from the bloodless white of her fingertips, Gale knows.

When Madge turns to him, he can see that she knows that he sees. He wants desperately to back away. To shove her far from him. He wants to shut his eyes and never look into hers again. Because behind her eyes, behind her suddenly rapid breath, Madge Undersee is imagining precisely what he is. She is slipping, like a ghost, between the two on stage to steal Katniss from between Prim's arms.

Gale drops her hand in shock.

Madge smiles.

Gale curses.

"So I guess that makes two of us."

~Fini

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to S. for betaing my drafts, (it would've been a different story without you!) and L. for catching my punctuation mistakes. : )


End file.
